The Scorecard – UFC on FOX 2: Evans vs. Davis

The Scorecard hits the highs and lows of the latest big event offering in MMA. Points are assigned completely at random but stay between ten and negative ten because I hate math.

It was the UFC’s big return to FOX and despite nearly one hour of in-cage action, fans were left just as disappointed as they were back in November when they only saw 64 seconds of fighting. Chicago hardcores, used to seeing the greatness of Michael Jordan, Derrick Rose, Stan Mikita, and Jonathan Toews were subject to watch the “just enoughness” of Rashad Evans and Chael Sonnen. By the end of the night, fans were probably begging for Kanye West to interrupt the main event to announce, “hold on Rashad, I’mma let you finish by Jon Jones is the greatest fighter of all time.”

Lets go to the scorecard:

*Pretty disappointing for Dustin Jacoby, Chris Camozzi, and the fans that their fight wasn’t even on Facebook. Maybe Dana White was more worried about the hackers than he’d lead us to believe. MINUS ONE

*Oh God, the first voice we hear on the UFC Prelims is Jay Glazer. Not a good start. MINUS TWO

*I’m not sure how far Johnson can go in the division, but he has some scary power to be able to stop Beltran like that. PLUS FOUR

*Extra points to Johnson for those sick uppercuts. PLUS THREE

*No really Beltran, you should have touched gloves. MINUS ONE

*As always, I have to take away points from these TV broadcasts because they don’t televise walk outs and have too many commercials. MINUS THREE

*Michael Johnson looked much improved in the first round with his striking and takedown defense. Good job by him. PLUS TWO

*That said, he faded as the fight went along and it’s not like Shane Roller switched up his game all that much. MINUS TWO

*Poor form by the crowd, booing when they immediately clinched. MINUS TWO

*I didn’t like the call by Herb Dean in the third round. Were some of the shots to the back of the head? Yes, but Johnson wasn’t getting out of the position and we’ve seen guys get pounded out like that before. It made Roller re-think his strikes and gave Johnson time to recover. MINUS FOUR

*Also, if you’re going to make that call and say it’s a foul, then stand them up and give Johnson time to recover. Shoddy call by Herb. MINUS TWO

*I guess Herb judged the fight as well. MINUS ONE

*Not a good post-fight interview from Johnson. It didn’t help that Joe Rogan didn’t get his unfunny TV commercial reference but saying your footwork sets you apart while not acknowledging your lack of cardio was pretty lame. MINUS THREE

*To prove I actually liked something about the fight, I’ll give the fight as whole points because it was an entertaining bout. PLUS FIVE

*Big fan of Charles Oliveira and it was great to see him at 145 and winning again. PLUS THREE

*Awesome calf slicer submission by Oliveira. This kid will be a beast for years to come. PLUS SIX

*Not a great first UFC impression by Eric Wisely. MINUS ONE

*It was nice that Johnson didn’t get dragged into the whole “Strikeforce heavyweights have always belonged in the UFC” deal. Everyone is there now and that’s all that matters. Johnson’s win doesn’t prove all them have always belonged and if he lost, it wouldn’t have meant that none of them belong. It’s a dumb argument. PLUS FOUR

*FOX just can’t do any sporting event without including robots, can they? Get me Will Smith. MINUS THREE

*Even though FuelTV doesn’t televise full walk outs, they showed enough of Cub Swanson’s walk-out for me to catch that he came out to “N-ggas in Paris” by Jay-Z and Kanye West. BALL SO HARD! PLUS THREE

*It appears that Brittney Palmer is back to being beautiful and is no longer stunning according to Mike Goldberg. MINUS ONE

*Sick right hand by Swanson on George Roop. You would have thought that Roop realized that it was the only thing Swanson was throwing with any effectiveness, but nope. PLUS THREE

*Extra points for knocking out the mouthpiece of Roop with the punch. PLUS FOUR

*And Goldberg’s commentary was extra bad during the fight as well. MINUS THREE

*Anyone who comes out to Red Hot Chili Peppers is a good man in my book. I salute you Evan Dunham. PLUS TWO

*Good scrap between Dunham and Nik Lentz. Not the most technical fight ever, but both guys got after it on the feet and did some nice work on the ground. PLUS FIVE

*It was a shame that the doctor stopped the fight as Lentz was still in the fight, but fighters safety comes first. I also think that UFC didn’t want too much blood on the mat before going on FOX. EVEN

*Once again, points will be deducted until UFC on FOX doesn’t use NFL on FOX music. MINUS TWO

*I approve of Randy Couture and Jon Jones in place of Dana White and Brock Lesnar. Couture won’t be as emotional as Dana and Jones obviously is invested in the main event. PLUS TWO

*That said, it would have been nice if Curt Menefee knew who Jones was. MINUS ONE

*BOOOO RANKINGS! MINUS TWO

*Yeah, lets not talk about Chris Weidman vs. Demian Maia. It was a sloppy striking contest before they got tired and then it was a drunken striking contest once they were tired. MINUS FOUR

*I’m taking away even more point from Maia, who had a full training camp and still showed up the way he did. At least Weidman has some type of an excuse. MINUS SIX

*A lot of credit has to be given to Michael Bisping, who fought a very good fight against Chael Sonnen, especially in the first two rounds. He bettered him striking and controlled the clinch, where many thought Sonnen would have the advantage. PLUS FIVE

*Also credit goes to Sonnen, who, as expected, just kept moving forward and out-wrestled Bisping in the third round. PLUS FIVE

*However, I have to take points from the judges for not agreeing with me, as I thought Bisping won 29-28. MINUS TWO

*Extra points because I was entertained for the entire 15 minutes. PLUS SIX

*What an awesome promo by Chael. PLUS FOUR

*As great as it was though, he didn’t mention fighting Anderson Silva again, which should have been his main bullet point. MINUS TWO

*Funny moment by Jones as he acknowledged Rashad’s “swagger jacker” comment. PLUS ONE

*You use “All of the Lights” by Kanye West, you get points Phil Davis. PLUS ONE

*”Survival of the Fittest” is such a great walk-out song. Nice job Rashad Evans. PLUS TWO

*Aaaaaand Evans vs. Davis was underwhelming. Evans seemed to fight not to lose while Davis was just in over his head. MINUS FIVE

*I do want to give Evans credit though because Davis is a skilled fighter and Evans was never in trouble during the fight. So good job by him. PLUS THREE

*If nothing else, Jon Jones really loves himself some Jon Jones. EVEN

*Overall UFC on FOX 2 felt pretty underwhelming. These FOX shows are built on the main card and this main card delivered one good fight, but it was sandwiched between two very lackluster outings. MINUS THREE

Official Score: 11

For a more in-depth look at UFC on FOX 2 plus a preview of this weekends UFC 143: Diaz vs. Condit event, make sure to check out tomorrows Five Ounces of Podcast with Samer Kadi and myself.

Sonnen recycled some old Super star billy graham promo and cut it sucking wind and inching out a tough opponent… He was acting like he just finished an opponent in seconds in the first round, Sonnen’s antics have jumped the shark. It’s clearly forced and at this point unoriginal… hopefully Silva puts this nuisance to bed once and for all…

P.S. the real winner in this fight was Bisping earning alot of respect from the fans PLUS FIVE.

I think Davis is basically Rashad 2.0, but he doesn’t have the experiene to compete at the level Rashad is fighting at just yet. He reminds me a lot of how Rashad looked in his first few fights with the UFC; good wrestling, but elemntary striking that needs a lot of work. Give him a few years and some more mid-level fighters and I expect he’ll be fighting at the top level.

I severely underestimated Bisping and personally I think he got robbed by the judges. I guess I could see an argument for scoring it 29-28 Sonnen, but there was no excuse for any of the judges to have it 30-27.

Maia will never fight for the belt again if he keeps showing up gassed by the 3rd round. There’s no excuse for that.

I actually agreed with the doctor stoppage in Dunham/Lentz. Sure Lentz probably could have continued, but he said he couldn’t see out of his eye and due to how fast it swole shut I think he’s probably looking at a fractured orbital.

For all of Einemo’s BJJ credentials he still hasn’t seemed to realize that if you don’t control posture you’re going to get punched in the mouth.

Roop didn’t look too bad in the first round, but by the second Swanson was figuring out his timing and Roop really should have tried to change things up between rounds. He didn’t and instead Swanson showed a text book slip-n-rip

Oliveria looked absolutely dominating. I don’t recall Wisely landing a single shot in the entire bout and the fluidity that Oliveria showed at his new weight should put a lot of 145ers on notice.

Johnson/Roller went exactly as I figured it would. The only surprise was the improvement of Johnson’s footwork and the lack of improvement in Johnson’s cardio. As for the strikes to the back of the head I agree with Herb that there should have been a warning, but at the same time if you’re going to stop the action to give that warning you should stand the fighters up and reset. You can’t go halfway Herb, choose to either stop the fight for a warning and reset or stop the fight and call it a TKO.

Johnson looked pretty good in his UFC debut and showed good stopping power. That said, Beltran looked pretty terrible. If you weight in for HW at 228lbs you should at least have some definition. Beltran looked doughy and it seemed iike he was fighting at HW simply because he didn’t want to cut weight to fight at LHW. Hell, as squishy as he looked he could probably make 185 if he actually tried. Personally I think the only reason he didn’t drop down is because he knows he doesn’t have the talent to fight at 205 and he’s managed to squeak by as a low level HW simply because the HW division has been anemic until recently. But with this new generation of HW talent I think Beltran is going to realize he’s in over his head in either division and he’ll either be released or retire with possibly one more fight under the UFC’s banner.

Sorry for the 2 posts, my tablet decided that I was done halfway through.

The only real snoozers, IMO, were Einemo/Russo (which should not be mentioned ever again; as fans, we should pretend it never happened) and Maia/Weidman.

As a Maia fan, I was really disappointed with his performance. He didn’t even try to take the fight to the ground until the 3rd round, when he was totally gassed out. It was a sloppy striking match between a BJJ guy and a wrestler, with few significant strikes landed. No thanks.

If Bisping had a bit more power he’d have won that fight. He tagged Sonnen lots of times when he was rushing in, but couldn’t truly hurt him and escape the constant pressure. I thought Sonnen did enough to win, but it was very close and wasn’t pretty.

Evans plain outclassed Davis. He earned his title shot easily, cruising to a decision and taking little damage in the process. I can’t really blame him for that, even if the fight was a bit underwhelming. I’m not a huge fan of Rashad, but the dude is one of the best at 205 and will give Jones a good fight. Davis has to go back to the drawing board. His striking looked amateurish and, for all his talk of being the better wrestler, he got out-wrestled and then out-grappled on the mat.

For the Johnson/Roller fight, the argument that “we’ve seen guys get pounded out like that before” with the shots to the back of the head doesn’t make much sense to me. I’m thrilled that “the commission” is making an effort to control these illegal blows. Have fights been stopped in the past on these blows? Many times. Should they have? Absolutely not. Did Herb do a stellar job of handling the illegal blows? No …. he should’ve stopped the action, given an official warning and allow Johnson to recover. In time, I hope that the approach to handling punches to the back of the head is fully defined and standardized. In the meantime, this was a move in the right direction and justice was served. If Roller would’ve won based (even partially) on these blows, it would’ve been wrong.